Topic: What PS4 Games Are You Currently Playing?

I started The Last of Us Part 2, right after finishing The Last of Us Remastered. I played both of these for the first time. I dont really understand neither hype nor drama about this franchise. Gameplaywise they are both pretty boring - oh wonder, oh wonder, all generators are out of fuel, all doors are stuck, all water parts have a board of wood next to it.... I feel like I could have stopped after the second or third chapter in Remastered and wouldnt have missed a single thing in relation to the level design. Also, how come theres always only one way yet I keep walking around for 5 minutes to find that single exit for the current area. Its all make belief, no real post apocalyptic world would work like this I dont think.

I also dont really get the praise of the story. The first game was praised alot for being this emotional perfect spotless ride, yet I didnt really feel any of that. Its a copy paste story of "hey I have to protect this girl and then I end it with a shock to make people talk about it". Part 2 worked alot better in that regard, I know theres a hate-cult about it, but I dont get that. As someone not at all heavily invested about in the first game I didnt really feel anything when certain things happend in the second one.

And no, I am not emotinally dead inside, I just honestly think these two are very boringly written, boringly designed video games. I am now in Chapter 3 in Part 2 and I think I will just watch the rest of the plot on youtube, I dont really care to walk around aimlessly looking for fuel for the 800th time anymore. Its just not good and I dont understand how this can get 10/10 scores. But to each their own.

I said I would hold off posting until I had more to say on Part 2, but I played another three hours and I feel like I already have a lot to say again, but don't worry, it is positive this time!

I said an open world Last of Us probably couldn't work, but I meant that in the modern sense of an open world. This is more like open zone, there is a clear, linear path through the space, but a few optional places to explore spread out just far enough to feel like real space rather than just videogame levels, with a smattering of enemies tossed around. Honestly, this really worked for me. I really enjoyed working my way through these zones, taking the time to go to each question mark I added to my map, or poke my head into any building I stumbled across (I love how you can just smash glass to get into buildings, too).

It certainly helps that Naughty Dog's art direction and environmental storytelling remain some of the best in the business. Some of these locations that you could potentially miss entirely, are packed with more detail than many main campaign locations in other games. I love how I got to know Dina better as we conversed while going through these spaces, while using the the little notes and all the environmental storytelling to slowly put the pieces together around what happened to this location around me.

Oh and that moment where Ellie plays the guitar and starts with Future Days... oh man, why am I crying in the club right now? To be fair, while the game doesn't give you a lot to do there, walking around Joel's house genuinely really got me, too. Maybe I just really love Joel as a character, or maybe it is because I lost a parent, but man, walking around that quiet ass house, the flowers left for him outside and just looking at all of his stuff. Man... why am I crying in this club again right now?

I will say I didn't need multiple skill trees to be honest. I also don't like how now skill trees are linear, so if you want one perk later on but don't care for the others, you have no choice but to buy all the other stuff. Dunno why they made this change, to be honest.

I also kinda don't wanna imagine the crunch that went into making this game, because it is somehow even more obsessively detailed than the first game is. Some of the new, or improved, animations here are so utterly unnecessary but are still so massively appreciated for what they bring to the general immersion the game offers, just absolutely bonkers stuff.

I also said that combat felt exactly the same, this was apparently completely wrong. The accessibility options still seem to have a weirdly lopsided effect on gameplay. To get the settings to the point where Stealthing my way through Infected sections isn't controller snappingly frustrating, also means if left alone the human enemies literally have no senses apparently, but I guess at least in some ways this is better, as at least I can tell the options are working on the Infected. In Part 1, even at the maximum settings, I still barely noticed stealth getting any easier against the Infected. Plus, at least they introduced silencers now too, this has a really positive impact on getting through the infected stealth sections.

The human enemies though, for as stupid as they are, still remain the highlight for combat in these games. Things like the new stun mechanic mean bottles are now maybe the best weapon in the whole game. You can use them to stun enemies, and then charge in for a finisher, which always feels so good and makes combat feel faster, less dated and janky. But they also introduced the Left Behind ability of using bottles to lure infected into humans, or lead people into traps and stuff. Really fun stuff. Add to that these bigger, more multi levelled spaces, combat just feels so much better. It now isn't just about circle strafing around a convenient waist height box until you can get around behind someone to watch that same stealth finisher over and over again.

Also, I know it is just smoke and mirrors, but man if I didn't feel something every time I grabbed a guy, told him to be quiet, listened as he tried to reason with me right before I stab him anyway and toss him away like trash. Only to wait for his buddy to arrive, scream 'Oh no Joey!' and then absolutely lose his ***** when he realises I killed absolutely everyone. I mean it is horrible morbid stuff, but also really excellent stuff. I also am not sure if I am meant to be killing everyone, but they have made it so fun to do, I am. Heheheeh

I also like how companions now have a more active role within the game. Even turned up to the max accessibility option in Part 1, companions often didn't really do a whole lot, even when you were getting absolutely wrecked. But now companions take a more active role in combat, a more active role in puzzles, point out information for you and impressively can even blow stealth sections for you as well which is probably going to turn into a frustration later on, but as of right now I was just kinda impressed the AI could no longer stand in the open while you stealthed around the place.

I dunno if this is how the whole game is structured, or whether it will be more traditional Last of Us style levels from here on out, but at least I can say these three or so hours were awesome.

@Pizzamorg You’re on a real roller coaster, mate! 😂

Yeah, I was biting my tongue a little bit when you said in your first impression post that the combat, gameplay, and level design felt identical to P1. Glad you have found something to enjoy after the rough first hours.

And yeah, really feeling the consequence of your actions (especially with killing) is a major theme of the game throughout, even with the routine murder of each NPC. Like I said in my review, the stark contrast to the lovable mass-murderer Nathan Drake.

I really am @Th3solution! Wherever I end up with this game, at least I can say it was never boring!

Yeah, it is weird, because those opening hours take place in more traditional Part 1 environments, I think entirely against Infected from memory and you don't have a lot of those meaningful upgrades yet, so the combat just felt identical to me and the new things they added had basically no impact on combat. It is kind of a shame they did this, as people who did an 'Alright, I am out' after that death scene don't really ever get to see what this game has to offer, gameplaywise, which only further strengthens my belief that the opening couple of hours of this game just suck.

The approach to NPC slaughter is very different to Part 1. They had a little of this in Part 1, but Part 1 as we spoke about before is very much more about the player framing their own events, rather than being told how to feel about the events. I am kinda sad that this is lost now and the game is more directly telling you how to feel about things, but this complaint is somewhat offset as the AI behaviour in this regard is really interesting and the wider combat sandbox around these events feels so much stronger (at least against humans).

Yes, Return to Arkham is not 60 fps. It's really disappointing that the game isn't running at 60 fps when the combat system, especially in Arkham City, is such a highlight.

Thank you. Again, I don't consider it to be that much of an achievement, it's pretty doable, just very frustrating sometimes.

I forgot to mention that I had a lot of hard crashes while I was playing through Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. I would boot up the game, load my saved game and move forward and then the game would hard crash all of a sudden. This happened quite a few times.

@Pizzamorg (and others) it might be worth sticking continued chat into the TLOU2 specific thread as there’s some spoilery chat going on (just in case there is still anyone out there who hasn’t played the game yet!)

https://www.pushsquare.com/forums/ps4/the_last_us_part_ii_-_o...

The OT is fully spoilered to so there shouldn’t be much of a worry of accidentally reading anything; most of the chat on the last page are general feelings about the game/ending.

That is fair, I did look around for a thread way back when I was playing through Part 1. There were a LOT of threads, and a lot of them looked quite old, so I didn't know what the 'necro' rules were, so I have been using these threads ever since. Good to know what thread to use, and that I have the okay to necro it, I'll jump into there next time (:

Devil May Cry 5!
What a game! I have not played Bayo3 yet, but this might be the best game in its genre. Hated DMC4, but just having a decent camera & removing the unnecessary puzzles goes a long way.
‘V’ is my favourite character to play as, but I literally just got Dante so who knows.
Game goes from strength-to-strength.

@Fight_Teza_Fight Do you recommend DMC5 as a good entry point to the series? I think I played little bits and pieces of a couple of the older games, but really don’t have any idea about the characters or plot (if one exists)

@Th3solution DMC5 is not a good entry point. There are so many characters and references to past games that you will not understand most of the stuff happening on the screen. For instance, one character is from DMC1, another is from DMC3, another one is from DMC4 and so on.

DMC5 is easily the best game in the series though, but I still highly recommend playing through the games from the beginning. You can skip DMC2 as it doesn't contribute to the overall story and it's not a fun game. But you should at least play DMC 1, 3 and 4 before getting to 5.

@Th3solution Yeah as @LtSarge says it’s not a good starting point.
They’re semi-standalone I guess? Dante is given a case, which he accepts & goes on a killing spree until he gets to the real villain.
Dante might be the poster boy but there are several characters that are just as important. The characters & their different playstyles are a big part of the series (as well as boss fights) & there are through lines connecting the games.

Personally I found it pretty hard to go back to the earlier games, but I’m glad I did. Unless you can find a super comprehensive story synopsis on YouTube covering DMC1-4 I wouldn’t recommend starting with DMC5.

@Fight_Teza_Fight @LtSarge okay, thanks. Looks like I’ll probably put it on hold until I can either get a chance to play the other games or find a good YouTube summary. I have plenty to play anyways.

I have quite a good time playing Uncharted 4. Its esaliy the best game the serie. Its so much bettet then the prevoius games @Th3Solution Yeah agree that DMC V is maybe not the best starting point. That said I think you would still have a good time if you decided to play it. I can ohtetwise very much recommend Ninja Theorys DMC game from 2013. I think its a game many might have missed.

A little over halfway through the campaign on Zombie Army 4 and it’s great fair play. So much fun to play, looks beautiful, decent enemy variety and some nice level and challenge design. This one’s being filed under hidden gem! Shout out to @CaptD for suggesting it 🫡

Thanks to PushSquare for bringing this to my attention, I bought a month of PS+ Premium for €5. Already got half a dozen games lined up to play, but the first one is naturally Stray. I've been eyeing it since release but didn't feel like it's worth paying full price for.

Played for about half an hour so far and it's a very cozy experience. It's also an unusual game since there aren't many that let you play as an average animal. It's weird that we don't have more games like this.

Anyway, really liking Stray so far and I know what I'll be playing for the rest of the weekend!

Is it a PS4 game or is it retro? But I’m playing Skyrim.

4th time should be the charm. Started it twice on PS3, played it for about 25hrs in VR & now on PS4. Despite probably putting in about 300 hrs in total I’ve never beaten it.

I guess ‘beating’ the story in Skyrim isn’t really the point, but need to get this out of my backlog & move on.
Funnily enough I’ve been mostly mainlining it & with just 15hrs played, I’m further in then I have ever been before.

Also for some reason this game still crashes on the PS4Pro😂.
It’s not a bug. It’s a feature.

@Fight_Teza_Fight I’ve posted this a few times before but I completed PS3 Skyrim completely unpatched (thanks to the hospital accommodation Wi-Fi I had not allowing my console to connect) so had the memory dump issue causing horrendous frame rate drops. I think I beat the final boss literally running at less than 10fps

I’ve fired the game up a couple of times since and never made it past the end of the opening cart sequence.

@RogerRoger It’s still glitches galore. Enemies stuck in walls, dying & the game not recognising you’ve died. I’ve had one annoying glitch were a dragon shows up in a city (Morthal) & even after killing it, it kept respawning every time I fast travelled back to it. Killed practically all the NPCs (apart from the children of course)

@Thrillho I’ve also mentioned this before but Skyrim is the game that killed my PS3. The save files got so big & with the fps drops my ps3 kept overheating that it completely eroded the thermal paste.
My dad repasted it back then, but it only held out for another 2 weeks or so. Then upgraded to a PS4.

If Skyrim kills my PS4Pro that might be the excuse I needed to upgrade to a PS5🤔

@Thrillho

I call BS

@kyleforrester87 What did they say?